The pier wasn’t more than half a mile ahead; I could smell it, feel it in my pores, all that freshly hooked bait cooking under the June sun. The cherry popsicle I’d stolen from The Duck was melting down my fingers, coating my rings and tongue with sugar as I licked the stickiness away. I eyed the sailboats returning from an early morning in the sun, the water shimmering around them as if it were made of jewels and giving the late afternoon a subtle, creamy glow. 

​

I loved this time of day, just before the earth began to cool off, when the sky was worn-out and blended almost seamlessly into the blue horizon. Families were just beginning to pack up, escaping the last moments of sweltering heat and trekking sand into their beach-front two-stories to start rounds of outdoor showers. The docked fishermen carried coolers off-board, their faces fighting the wind and shining with satisfaction or disappointment at the day’s work. To my right was a long strip of vendors, men mostly, selling fruit and fish and nautical decor only a tourist would bother buying. In the off-season there’d be nothing but dirty mariners and dog-tired restaurant workers hanging around the water, but it was the dead of summer, and a crowd of freshly tanned and unrecognizable faces swam through the backbones of Rockpool Bay with nothing but a smile. I was thinking about this when a short man called out to the beach, begging me and whoever else to buy his fish. 

​

“Largemouth bass,” he cried. “Bullhead catfish! Crappies! The freshest around!” 

​

I wanted to tell him he’d have better luck selling the shits if he wasn’t smack in the middle of the fishing hub, or if the tourists lingering nearby weren’t so inclined to trust the grocery stores, but Billy was waiting for me under the pier, and I still had no fucking idea how to tell him I was leaving tomorrow. 

​

By the time I could see him the smell of dead fish and saltwater had settled into my nose. My chest tensed at the sight of him, his body bleached from the sun and standing out against the algae of the pier’s underside. He was resting in a sliver of shade, his back against a pillar, sea foam washing in and pooling just in front of his feet. My increasing closeness to him forced a deep, nervous sigh. For a moment I saw him as if he were a stranger, and when he finally looked up and smiled, he reminded me of a dog on the happiest day of its life, leading up to a night of being put down. 

​

“Della Bella,” he yelled as I walked up. 

I tossed the popsicle I’d stolen for him into his lap, which had melted into dyed sugar water and was slushing around in its packaging. This mundane death of a snack depressed me, evidence that nothing good ever lasted no matter how fucking fast I tried to pull it from the freezer and deliver it to him. 

​

He tugged at the plastic carefully and drank from the opening. “The Duck?” 

“Robbed it.” 

“Loot anything else?” 

I joined him in the sand and opened my bag. “Some floss.” 

He turned my face towards his and looked at my teeth. “You need it.” 

​

I did a fake laugh and handed him The Duck’s name-brand peanut butter crackers, which he opened instantly, and a can of diet coke. 

​

After a long while of people-watching, I noticed a small, lonely sailboat secured to a dock down shore. The anchor rope had a bell tied to the top and as the water rolled on gently there was this ringing, muffled by distant voices and the denseness of the heat. If I looked away the sound vanished into the air, and when I looked back it started up again, the volume growing slowly the longer I focused. It reminded me of trying to stare at the stars and so I felt like crying. 

​

“You know whose that is?” Billy asked, following my eyeline. 

“I never seen it before.” I thought of how to tell him I was going to Maine and never coming back. 

“Well it can’t be a local’s.” 

“Why not?” 

“Ain’t gotta name. Bad luck for a boat to go unnamed. None of these superstitious folks round here got a boat ridin round unnamed.” 

​

I didn’t have much to say to that. I felt doomed by bad luck, doomed by the fact that all the goodness ever given to me was bound to be someday taken away. This was how I felt about leaving Billy. It was also how I felt about being born with a daddy like the one I got; a man only capable of leaving me without any place to call home, following the money because whenever he got some he’d spend it like the world was ending. I felt angry and stupid and lied to for thinking he’d ever let me live in the Bay forever. He’d only given me a year. 

​

“There’s somethin wrong, ain’t there?” 

​

“I feel like shit.” 

​

If Billy had learned anything during our year together, it was that if I was acting off, it probably had something to do with my daddy fucking me over in one way or another. So when all he said was what’d he do this time? I smirked because that was only the beginning. Then I felt a little guilty because I wasn’t the only one getting fucked over this go-round; Billy had something to lose too. How could I word the news, a thing so awfully, terribly sad, in a way that wouldn’t break his heart? I’m leavin and I can’t do nothin about it? I’m sorry for knowin as long as I did and waitin till the last minute to tell you? My daddy’s a motherfuckin pile a dogshit and wants nothin more than to ruin my whole goddamn heartbreakingly pitiful life?

​

“Nothin,” I lied. “He didn’t do nothin.” I took the last sip of coke and crushed the can, shoving it into my bag, thinking about how the day was so beautiful and that we only had what was left of it to spend together, and so then I started saying stuff about the sunshine making me feel better already. I took my eyes off the water, the sun putting holes in my vision and distorting Billy’s face. He moved my hair behind my ear, a gesture so casual it was as if my head was his own. 

​

I forced a smile. “If you could do anythin today, what would you do?” 

His eyes floated elsewhere as he hummed through his thoughts, so I stared at him for a while, admiring his eyelashes, and then his hands, and his knees, and how all the hair on this body had turned blonde against his skin. Then I felt this heat rising behind my cheeks and had to look away. 

“I’d go to the Little Yellow House,” he grinned. 

“Ice cream?” 

“Hell yeah.” 

​

So that’s what we did. We packed up, triple checked our spot for liter, and began walking. I held Billy’s hand in the same absent-minded way he’d touched my hair, but when that started not feeling like enough, I let go, looped my arm around his, and held it again, keeping my body as close to his as possible. As we walked I thought about the parallels of our first and last days together. Then I thought about our first day of school. I’d held onto him the same way last August. I remember him blushing as he showed me around the hallways. We’d been friends a few months by that point but every time I got close he blushed anyway. And I could tell he was excited to have me hanging on him in front of everybody despite knowing I just loved to touch and loved to be touched. 

​

By September he’d kissed me. It took so long because Billy took his time with everything. The first time we borrowed his daddy’s truck he slowed down at the stop signs so ridiculously I figured a cop was riding our ass. Then I realized he was just being careful with me. And maybe that was when I first felt an affection for him like the one he felt for me. Maybe it was the night my daddy beat me so bad I had blood in my hair and Billy cleaned me up and let me sleep in his bed with him. Or when I woke up in the morning and he was still holding my hand. 

​

Very early into knowing Billy I understood what kind of relationship we’d have. I could sense it coming from my daddy’s front porch, a friendship so wholesome and mutual, the intimacy of it went unspoken. We were best friends who shared food and joints and slept together without saying a word about it. It was really that simple. The amount Billy seemed to like me and his natural inclination towards going with the flow allowed for it to be. We could be in love without speaking of it. And so I guess we were. In love. And in this childish way that didn’t mean anything besides how good it felt in the moment. 

​

By the time we got to the Little Yellow House, the line was out the door. This unsettled me in an unfamiliar way; I usually never gave a shit about things like waiting around or killing time, but today there was so little time to be had, and so I felt this tinge of anxiety settling in the depths of my stomach as the night approached. Billy had showed me this place, maybe during our first week together, saying it had the best rainbow sherbet around and an oak tree out front that was so oversized, kids would climb up to eat their ice cream cones in big groups. Then he told me a story about a bear cub that got stuck up there, moving from branch to branch for so long people were forced to name him Oakley. He said it was in the newspapers and everything, and I remember thinking he was telling a lie in the show-and-tell way people do when they’re first getting close, but when he actually took me there, the clipping was stapled to the wall. 

​

Along with sherbet and bear cubs and the perfect climbing tree, the Little Yellow House had the best Putt-Putt in Rockpool. There were kids running around with miniature clubs and golf balls of all shades and colors. I eavesdropped on their awkward conversations as we stood in line. They were screaming and hollering like they had faulty, elderly ears, cursing up a storm with very little grasp of where ‘fuck’ really belongs in a sentence and when it can be exchanged with ‘damn’. Billy and I waited with our backs against the house’s yellow exterior, our bodies bouncing on the weak porch anytime one of those kids ran by. 

​

“You talk to Tony yet?” He asked as we stepped a foot closer to the door. 

​

A month ago I’d told him about this rich girl I knew who bought some shrooms and took me to Disney World. This was back when I was still living in Florida, when the best way to spend the deliriously hot summer had surpassed getting tipsy off her parent’s wine cellar and had moved on to bigger and harder things. We’d eaten the shrooms with peanut butter and then quite literally skipped arm-in-arm around the Magic Kingdom, our stomachs queasy and overstimulated and our throats capable of nothing but giggling. I told Billy I’d felt very happy on shrooms, very light and colorful, and this made him want to try them too. So we talked to this kid from school and he said he’d let me know when he had some for us. 

​

And I had talked to Tony. He’d sold me a few grams just before my daddy announced we’d be leaving Rockpool and returning to Maine. In hindsight it would have been nice to trip with Billy as a final goodbye, but that night, for whatever reason, I put the bag into a little velvet box, along with a couple other things, and decided I’d give the present to Billy as a tangible way to remember me once I was gone. And it was finally zipped into the small pocket of my bag, awaiting the moment I handed it over for good. 

​

“He got us some,” I said to him. 

Billy smiled. “It’s really as fun as you say?” 

“It’s different for everyone.” 

“But you had fun?” 

“Yeah, but I like to eat just a little cause it makes everything colorful and you don’t gotta get all weird about feelin different than usual. That’s the key.” 

“What’d you call that again?” 

“Microdosing.” 

​

I’d introduced Billy to a lot of things his mama wouldn’t approve of. I used to be a little jealous of the togetherness of his family, figured somebody must be hiding something because there was no way they were just that happy. But it didn’t take long for me to realize he just came from good people, simple as that, because his mama still liked me despite the changes in her son’s disposition since meeting me. Billy wasn’t so shy anymore. He’d become quite sure of himself. 

​

He put his arm around me as the line moved us through the door, talking into my ear. “So when are we gonna eat em?” 

​

My stomach kind of rolled over, sick at the thought of all the different levels of disappointment that would come with my impending announcement. “Someday,” I said quickly, my nerves turning in on themselves. 

​

“I wanna do it soon.” 

“We gotta wait for the perfect day, ya know? When we’re good and ready.” 

“Not everything’s gotta be so written into the stars.” 

“Everything’s written into the stars.” The coincidence of getting to say this to him gave me chills; it was the only comforting thing that’d been running through my mind for two weeks. 

“If you say so.” 

“You’ll get to trip, with or without me.” 

He laughed. “Why in God’s name would I do it without you?” 

“You never know,” I shrugged. “I could get arrested or somethin. But you’ll be fine without me.” 

“I don’t think I will.” 

​

Before I could say anything, Billy was telling them our order. 

​

We carried our sherbet back to the beach. The sun would settle into the ground soon, the sky already turning a dusky, navy blue, and we wanted to sit on the edge of Papa Punk’s dock and watch. I was wishing I had some wine or an airplane bottle or anything to make saying what I knew needed to be said a little easier. 

​

I felt sick. 

​

“You ain’t had a single bite of yours,” Billy said, looking down at the cone in my hand. I’d been licking at the edges as they dripped but I couldn’t stomach much more. The taste was coating the back of my throat, suffocating me. The world around us was going foggy and my hands were starting to shake. 

​

As our feet dangled off the edge of the dock I thought of Maine. I thought of where I’d be dragged next. I thought about how Billy was the only person I could tell anything to, yet here I was wasting the last day we had together by making myself sick over something I could have confessed and made peace with two weeks ago. I tried to take a deep breath. 

​

“Remember when we found that field by the marsh?” 

He grinned. “Alligator Alley?” 

“Is that what we named it?” 

“You named it Puddles.” 

I made a face. “You were right to overrule me.” 

“You know I’m too good at namin things.” 

There was a long pause. “How come we never went back?” 

“Got too much to do,” he shrugged. “Other things to explore.” 

The rapid disappearance of the sun was starting to eat at me. I didn’t want him to stop talking. “Like what?” 

​

“Get high and go to the aquarium.” He’d been wanting to do that for a while. He dug through my bag for a cigarette as he tried to remember why we hadn’t yet. I unzipped the side pocket and handed him the lighter. Then I saw the little velvet box I’d hidden for him in there, envisioning the impressive way I managed to fit the bag of shrooms, a lavender joint, and a folded-up picture of us with my new address written on the back inside. “Oh right,” he said, cupping his hands around the cigarette as he tried to light it, protecting the flame from the wind which had picked up considerably. “You watched that documentary.” 

​

I wiped away the sweat that had accumulated on the inside my palms. 

​

“Then you were against aquariums and zoos and anything else of the sort. I still ain’t sure an aquarium counts as a zoo though. Cause a fish is a fish and water is water, right? But I guess it does seem pretty evil to throw em all in that big tank.” 

​

I grabbed the cigarette, watching ash fall into the ocean. “Long as they have room to swim.” 

“Della Bella, you sound real casual to be talkin about the capturing of sea life for the greed of human beings.” 

“I’m just thinkin bout bigger, sadder things is all.” 

“Like?” 

“Like what’s left for us.” I pushed smoke into the wind. “I mean, what is there left for us to do? What’d we forget?” 

“Huh?” 

The nicotine was stirring everything up and suddenly I needed to cry so bad I could’ve sworn my face was swelling. “We done a lot though, right?” 

“More than I done my whole life.” 

“You think we made the most of our time? There’s things we haven’t done.” 

He was laughing a little because he didn’t know. “We can still do em.” 

​

I locked my eyes on the dark water smacking against the dock’s pilling, sparkling under the growing strength of the moonlight above us. I could feel him squinting with realization at the heaviness in my voice, the almost whisper I was talking with to hide the secrets in my throat. I felt like everything was close to spilling out at once, coating the dock with blood and shark guts like that scene in Jaws. 

​

“Della.” 

I had to wait for the sun to go down all the way, I decided. I would know what to say by then, or at the very least, the darkness would help me say it. 

“Della,” he said again. “Why won’t you tell me what’s wrong? Is it your dad?” 

“I miss when we used to go swimming.” 

“Swimming?” 

I grabbed my bag and stood quickly. “Skinny dippin. Wanna go?” 

​

I just started walking because I knew he’d follow. And I avoided his questions. I needed to get back on the sand, needed to touch the ocean and let the water drench my eyes before I could do it myself. So we walked along the shore until the night was irreversible, not stopping until a spot felt right. I was selfish for holding in this secret, and I knew it, but the longer I suffered over it the easier it seemed to keep him from it. I did it to make the transition for me as easy as possible. And a small part of me thought if I didn’t tell him, it wouldn’t happen. Maybe if I didn’t put it into words, my sudden and tragic reality would morph back into what it was before. And I just wanted things to stay the same. 

​

But something shifted as Billy and I stood before the dark water. The moment had come, I understood, to tell him everything. I held my hair away from my face, fighting the wind as it pushed against us. “I got somethin for you,” I said, placing the small velvet box into his palm and starting to take off my shorts. As he opened it the glossy luster of the photo, tucked beneath the other gifts, caught a beam of light. It was a picture of us standing in his front yard, backs against a palm tree, holding onto each other and smiling ear to ear. His mama had taken it. 

​

“What’s this for?” 

​

“I gotta tell you somethin,” I said, taking the box and dropping it in the sand with my bag. The moon was directly above us and shining like a spotlight from the sky. I felt older somehow, fueled by an adrenaline so concentrated that the muscles in my hands were beginning to clench. I was so anxious I almost started laughing. “C’mon,” I said, stripping off my remaining clothes without a moment of hesitation and running into the ocean. 

​

Billy followed quickly behind, smiling ear to ear, yelling into the dark, shimmering water. “What is it?” He laughed, splashing through the shallow waves. “Della!” 

​

My own pitiful laughter had ceased. Tears pushed against the back of my eyes as I swam out, pleading so desperately to be released that they began to pulse behind my cheeks and drip down my tongue. I tried to breathe through my rushing sobs as they began, thinking, this is my saltwater baptism… this was written in the stars. I ain’t sure why, but this was supposed to happen.

​

His face dropped as he looked at mine. “What is it?” 

​

The waves swelled past us and over the break with a ferocious crying. “I’m leavin Billy,” the wind drowning out my voice, sending my words elsewhere, carrying them out to sea. “I’m leavin.” 

​

He swam closer to me, his face tensed with the beginning stages of hearing something that must be a misunderstanding of the truth. “You’re what?” 

“Tomorrow, Billy. I’m leavin tomorrow. I ain’t gotta choice.” 

​

The water lifted our feet off the sand and returned them back to earth in this harsh, repetitive motion. Billy grabbed onto me, only a slight awareness of our nakedness, keeping the tide from pulling me away. “Where? Why are you just tellin me now?” 

​

“I didn’t know how,” I cried. I watched him begin to understand the seriousness of my confession. “I’m so sorry.” 

​

He let go and kept himself afloat. “How long have you known?” 

​

“I wanted to tell you, Billy.” 

“Della.” 

“But the day I found out you wanted to go see a movie, and I wanted to too, ya know? I wanted nothin more than to sit with you and watch a movie.” 

“Stop.” 

“I wasn’t plannin on keepin it from you, I promise. It’s just there was always somethin better for us to do than sulk.” 

“How long have you known?” 

“I didn’t wanna hurt you before I had to, Billy.” 

“Stop dodgin my fuckin questions. You been doin it all day. How long have you known?” 

“Two weeks. Two long, fuckin weeks. I shoulda told you. I know. But my daddy didn’t tell me for two months!” I felt like screaming, the waves much louder than before, like they were trying to scream back. “I shoulda told you but I didn’t. I didn’t wanna hurt you. It was just easier that way.” 

“Easier? Shit, just leavin me here to suffer on my own? What the fuck.” 

“Billy.” 

​

He kept his eyes focused on the black water as it approached us, the sky of stars as it swallowed our last moments together. “No wonder you were bein so fuckin weird today.” 

​

“I just wanted things to be how they always are. I wanted time with you.” 

“I didn’t get to,” he took a shaky breath. “You shoulda told me.” 

“There was no use in both of us bein miserable.” 

He turned to me, his face distorted by the moonlight and dripping with a pain that comes only from the depths of someone’s insides. “That ain’t your call to make, Della.” 

“We woulda had a shit day today and you know it.” 

“Yeah. Instead you had one on your own. You had all this shit weighin on you,” his voice broke. “I coulda carried some of it. I’d do anythin for you, Della. You oughta know that.” 

​

I fought the tide and the urge to sink to the bottom of the ocean, pulling him into my arms, feeling this circular force conjoining us at the desperate connection of our bodies. “I’m so sorry, Billy.” 

​

I could feel the moment the ocean shifted for good, when we both understood there was nothing left to do but hold onto each other and listen as the world went quiet. The tide slowed, the waves turning over gently, our cries watering down into this helpless, unforgettable sadness.